'Billions' Season 6 Episode 8 Review: Prince learns the winner doesn't always get the spoils
Contains spoilers for 'Billions' Season 6 Episode 8 'The Big Ugly'
The winner is supposed to get the spoils. But not in 'Billions' Season 6 and not for Corey Stoll's Mike Prince as Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti) schemes, hatches and manipulates his way to plucking the New York 2028 Olympics bid from the billionaire. In an episode that saw Prince train with Gabrielle 'Gabby' Reece and Wendy (Maggie Siff) partner with Olympics medal-winning star Megan Rapinoe, Chuck scored a medal for himself by ensuring that the marquee sporting event would now be held in Los Angeles instead of NY.
'The Big Ugly' is where everyone's on a mission and safe to say, the ones who went out of their way to achieve it meets with success. Taylor (Asia Kate Dillon) jealous of Philip Charyn's (Toney Goins) rising stature at MPC decides to sign Hypersonic, a cutting-edge aircraft brand as their transport for athletes, only to get a pummeling from Rian that the plans bend the laws of physics and could actually put the athletes lives in danger. The major boo-boo means bleeding, but the genius finds an ally in Charyn. That's one storyline that actually comes as good news after Prince has the bid snatched from him.
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Wendy's arc has to be the most unpredictable and sympathetic so far in the season. Her life has nosedived following her still a complicated relationship with Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis). There's a reason this is called complicated instead of a breakup. The drama does show that she's hurting and while there's nothing about Axe mentioned explicitly, she needs a win and that's down the drain. As head performance coach of the Olympics, this could have been her greatest shot partnering with Rapinoe, but that's a done fantasy now.
Prince's strained relationship with his wife Andy (Piper Perabo) was supposed to be on the mend and by the looks of it, they still may work things out, but it's the humiliation of losing that he has to get over, or even fight perhaps. 'The Big Ugly' is all about Chuck doing a Billy Hope. He's come out of his corner swinging and has managed to land some hard-hitting blows.
'Billions' continues to see Prince and Chuck see-saw, but the question would be about closure. Is this a season where Prince takes a beating? It is likely considering Chuck's been in the muck for some time now. Only time will tell whether the Olympics bid storyline will see an end this season, but Prince has just seen that start of Chuck's deviousness and that's the biggest spoil he's got out of all this.
'Billions' Season 6 airs Sundays at 9 pm ET on Showtime.